XT × VPay AMA Recap: Neobanks Narrative Heats Up, How VPay Is Changing the Game

Key points:

• The integration of traditional banks with Web3 is accelerating the implementation of "AI-driven new banks (Neobank)," ushering in an era of intelligent fund management.
• VPay reshapes the user experience by enabling unified management of fiat currency, cryptocurrency, and synthetic assets through its proactive AI assistant, AVA.
• The project adopts a non-custodial design and has been integrated with multiple banks worldwide, allowing users to easily consume and use their favorite tokens in real life.
• Founder Amir emphasized the concept of "de-VCification" and community co-building, and the $VPAY token will become the core of future profit sharing and user rights.

With the integration of traditional banking and Web3 technology, the crypto market is undergoing a financial revolution. "Neobank" has moved from a concept to a widespread reality. This is no longer just a matter of digital access, but rather the beginning of an AI-driven era of experiences that make money management smarter, more efficient, and more personalized.

At the heart of this evolution is VPay —a project that positions itself as the " first AI-driven omni-bank ." Through an AI assistant called AVA, it seamlessly connects and manages fiat currency, cryptocurrency, and even synthetic assets. This is a very ambitious vision—it's not just about simplifying how people spend and save, but about redefining how we understand and use finance.

During an AMA hosted by XT.COM on October 29, 2025, VPay founder Amir shared the driving force behind this vision, the core value of AI Agent AVA, global compliance and cross-chain financial capabilities, the design of the VPAY token, and the possible form of Neobank in 2026 and beyond.

Head over to XT.COM now to trade VPAY/USDT and join the next chapter of AI-driven finance.

— Peter Lee ( @pllgpt ), Host of XT.COM

— Amir ( @DeCryptoDudee ), Founder of VPay

What inspired you to found VPay? What opportunities do you see in the current new banking and crypto finance ecosystem?

I entered the crypto space in 2016, with a background in Web2 marketing, initially working in traditional internet marketing. I bought my first Bitcoin in 2016, officially entering the crypto industry. Later, I also shifted towards Web3 marketing, serving as the Chief Marketing Officer for several NFT marketplaces.

Last year, I founded my first project, WhaleIntel.ai, deployed on Virtuals. This project is now live and reached a peak market capitalization of $20 million, and it's quite active on the Base platform. After that, I co-founded VPay with several friends. I am also a co-founder and board member of German Blockchain Week.

To be honest, this project actually stemmed from personal frustration. One day, I suddenly got really annoyed with myself for having to open 5 to 10 different apps every day to check my finances. For example, if I'm investing in stocks, I have to open one app to check my holdings; if I want to spend in the EU using Euros, I have to open bank apps like Revolut and N26; to check crypto assets, I have to log into several wallets or exchanges; and if I want to check NFTs, I have to open two more apps. Whether it's Web2 or Web3, anything related to money requires me to switch back and forth between a bunch of apps.

So, this is where VPay's idea started. We saw this problem: a severe disconnect between the Web2 and Web3 financial worlds . Later, I found two friends: one a tech expert, proficient in programming and AI; the other a banking expert with extensive traditional financial resources; and I myself excelled in business and marketing. We hit it off immediately—why not work on this project together?

This is where VPay started : addressing real-world pain points and ultimately aiming to become a truly "all-in-one financial application" —allowing you to complete all your money-related transactions on a single platform.

You describe VPay as a "proactive AI bank." How does its AI assistant, AVA, help users beyond traditional analytics?

First, I want to clarify one point: AVA is not a chatbot. Of course, it has chat functionality and you can have conversations with it, but its purpose is much more than that. From the very beginning, our design goal was to make AVA a proactive AI assistant.

Most AI assistants on the market are "passive"—you have to actively seek them out to perform certain operations; AVA, however, is designed in the opposite way. It will proactively complete the tasks for you before you even speak. This is the first point I want to emphasize.

Secondly, there's AVA's core value. What we aim to do is enable AVA to help you manage your entire finances across both Web2 and Web3. It can access and understand your various spending habits: where you spend money, how much you spend, and where you overspend; it can also read your asset information on Web3—including your wallet, transactions, gains, and losses. AVA has complete insights into this data; it knows how your NFTs are performing, your stock returns, what opportunities you missed, and what potential profit margins exist.

Therefore, AVA is far more than just a chatbot. The depth of financial data it can access is unmatched by any other product on the market; more importantly, it is a proactive AI assistant, not a tool that passively waits for instructions.

In terms of user experience, how does VPay achieve seamless connectivity between fiat currency and crypto assets while ensuring compliance?

We had a significant advantage when we founded VPay: one of my co-founders had a very strong background and extensive resources in traditional banking. This saved us a lot of time, money, and effort. Generally, acquiring these bank-level partnerships requires years of accumulation.

Currently, we have partnered with three banks from three different jurisdictions. This makes us one of the few teams with a complete encrypted card system. While card issuance is not VPay's core business, we do offer services such as virtual cards, physical cards, and offshore accounts, which users can use globally just like regular bank cards—VPay works wherever Visa is accepted.

If banking services in a particular region experience issues, such as Asian banks being unavailable in certain countries, we can automatically switch to our European partner banks to ensure an uninterrupted user experience. This is why VPay achieves true global availability, a significant competitive advantage over similar products.

Regarding how VPay achieves seamless integration between fiat and cryptocurrency, this is one of our most innovative aspects. While there are many crypto card providers on the market, most cards only support a very limited number of blockchains and tokens—usually only one or two chains, and even then, they are limited to stablecoins (such as USDT and USDC) or a few mainstream assets, such as Polygon, Optimism, and Avalanche.

What sets VPay apart is that we can make any token payable in real life within hours. This is one of our team's core innovations, developed in-house. Not only can you deposit and spend using mainstream tokens like USDC and ETH, but if you have a preferred token, you can also contact VPay or the project team directly, and we can quickly integrate it, enabling that token to achieve real-world spending functionality at virtually zero cost.

At VPay, we always keep the user's non-custodial wallet at the core. This means that every transaction is authorized by the user; all operations are transparent, traceable, and conducted entirely on-chain; unlike some "crypto banks," VPay does not hide your fund operations in the background.

At the heart of the entire ecosystem is the $VPAY token. How does staking $VPAY translate into real-world equity?

I think this is a question that many VPay users and holders are very concerned about. I will answer it in two parts, the second part of which can be considered a significant " Alpha message ".

The first part is fairly standard, similar to the practices of most crypto banks or neobanks. The $VPAY token will become the core of the entire ecosystem. The more $VPAY you hold or stake, the higher your membership tier and benefits will be.

This is similar to the traditional banking system—whether it's Revolut, JP Morgan, Citibank, or other banks—where users pay a monthly fee (such as $20 or $80) to upgrade to a higher membership level (such as a gold card, platinum card, or black card) and enjoy better interest rates, higher cashback, and better customer service.

In VPay, all of this is achieved by holding or staking VPay tokens: the higher the level, the better the benefits—including lower transaction fees, higher cashback, better rewards, and more comprehensive access to features.

Part Two applies not only to VPay but also reflects my consistent philosophy across all projects. VPay has been entirely self-funded from day one, without accepting any venture capital (VC) investment, as has my previous project, Whale Intel.

I've raised millions of dollars from VCs for projects in the past, but frankly, that experience made me realize—I really don't like working with VCs. I don't like the way they look at projects, and I don't agree with the ideas they represent. So I decided to completely break away from the VC model and make VPay entirely driven by the team and community.

The reason I'm emphasizing this is because I truly believe that genuine co-ownership of a project should originate from the community. VPay started with users, is supported by users, and is created for users. Therefore, in the future, I hope to give back the project's achievements to users and the community, rather than making investors the sole winners, as in the traditional VC model.

As VPay grows and becomes profitable, we plan to reach a scale similar to Revolut in the future—a global fintech company valued at $75 billion and generating billions in annual revenue.

When that day comes, we will distribute a portion of the profits to token holders and stakers .

Since we don't have venture capital or a shareholding structure, profit distribution will be based on the amount of VPAY tokens held and the staking ratio. Of course, we will also reserve a portion of the profits for project expansion, marketing, and other ecosystem development purposes.

In summary, this is my long-term vision for VPay and all my projects: decentralized co-creation, de-VC-driven, and user-shared success. I truly believe this is the future direction of the integration of finance and crypto, and VPay will be part of driving this wave of "de-VC-driven" development.

Looking ahead, what VPay developments can users expect in the coming months? How will it further push the boundaries of Neobank?

We have already launched virtual cards, token swaps, and cross-chain bridges, allowing users to top up their cards with any supported token. Theoretically, we can enable any token to be used directly in the real world.

Going forward, we will continue to add more tokens to the VPay ecosystem. Moreover, this isn't just about token integration—when we launch a token, we often collaborate with the project team, the community, and token holders on joint marketing efforts, creating a self-sustaining flywheel effect for the entire ecosystem. Therefore, this direction is virtually limitless; our goal is to become the world's fastest and most widely supported crypto token platform for real-world payments. And we can achieve all of this at extremely low cost and at an incredibly fast pace.

In addition to virtual cards, our offshore accounts will also be launching soon. While this isn't VPay's core focus, I still believe that the offshore accounts we offer are among the best products currently available in the crypto space. You can freely transfer funds, withdraw cash, and use ATMs without limits or cumbersome verification processes.

However, it's important to emphasize that these are just our "first steps," perhaps only the first of 100 stages. VPay's vision is to continuously piece together this "user financial ecosystem puzzle"—truly integrating Web2 and Web3 financial management.

In the next phase, we will continue to release more modules, such as:

• Multi-wallet management and integrated asset management applications;
• Hedge Fund Manager allows users to earn annualized returns (APY) by staking or depositing funds.
• Native Staking & Yields;
• Market intelligence;
• Automated Trading;
• And products such as the upcoming Synthetic Stocks.

What I'm trying to depict is a future scenario where, when users think about "managing their own money"—whether it's crypto assets, fiat currency, NFTs, stocks, hedge funds, savings, credit cards, or current accounts—

Some might think this sounds too ambitious, too idealistic, and seemingly impossible. But I have only one answer: we have the strong support of the Virtuals ecosystem. This means that we don't need to reinvent the wheel for many service modules. For example, when we need to develop market intelligence, we don't have to build it from scratch; we collaborate directly with top-tier teams. The same logic applies to hedge funds or automated trading: we co-build with the best teams in the industry.

Currently, more than 10 partners have confirmed that they will jointly develop these modules within the VPay application.

Although we don't have the financial backing of large venture capital funds, nor are we a "new type of bank" valued at hundreds of millions, it is precisely because of our flexibility, efficiency, and close ecosystem collaboration that we can actually achieve implementation and innovation faster than these "large institutions".

About XT.COM

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